Back in Fashion 111
be outraged, as animal rights activists insist?
Should we applaud the advances the fur indus-
try has made in animal welfare? Or do such
measures merely “make us feel better about ex-
ploiting animals,” as Gary Francione, a Rutgers
University law professor who advocates ending
all human use of animals, has argued?
Like pig or chicken farming, fur farming is
about keeping animals in captivity their entire
lives and then killing them. It entails practices
many people would consider unthinkable. Some
fox farmers, for example, kill their animals by
anal electrocution. It’s supposedly the quickest
practical method, though with what one farmer
described mildly as “a perception problem.”
Industrializing our relationships with an-
imals has also created problems. Many fur
farmers manage to provide humane care on
a large scale, but others can’t or won’t. And in
the auction house sorting process, pelts from as
many as 300 farms, good and bad alike, can end
up together in the same lot. That’s a problem for
any designer label wanting to assure customers
of its reliance on humane, sustainable meth-
ods. The European fur industry says it is work-
ing on a fix, but its new WelFur program must
At a Bangkok tannery, skins from ostrich feet
dangle from a bamboo rod after being washed.
Fashion designers are enamored with this part
of the ostrich skin because it has an unusual
look and feel. Ostrich skins, like other hides,
can be dyed many colors. Increasingly, those
colors don’t resemble any found in nature.
PAOLO MARCHETTI, ALEXIA FOUNDATION